It must be wonderful to be seventeen, and to know everything.
Interpretation
The quote humorously reflects the confidence and perceived omniscience of adolescence.
Arthur C. Clarke's quote highlights the often exaggerated self-assurance and belief in one's knowledge that comes with being seventeen. It points out the irony of youth, suggesting that while teenagers may feel invincible and all-knowing, true wisdom often comes with age and experience.
In practice
During a graduation speech to highlight the idealism of youth.
Nowhere in space will we rest our eyes upon the familiar shapes of trees and plants, or any of the animals that share our world. Whatsoever life we meet will be as strange and alien as the nightmare creatures of the ocean abyss, or of the insect empire whose horrors are normally hidden from us by their microscopic scale.
As our own species is in the process of proving, one cannot have superior science and inferior morals. The combination is unstable and self-destroying.
It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value.
The best measure of a man's honesty isn't his income tax return. It's the zero adjust on his bathroom scale.
It was the mark of a barbarian to destroy something one could not understand.
My favorite definition of an intellectual: 'Someone who has been educated beyond his/her intelligence'.
I give myself very good advice, but I very seldom follow it.
The sage acts without taking credit. He accomplishes without dwelling on it. He does not want to display his worth.
Experience first, then intellectualize.
Speak the truth._x000D_ _x000D_ Give whatever you can._x000D_ _x000D_ Never be angry._x000D_ _x000D_ These three steps will lead you_x000D_ _x000D_ Into the presence of the gods.
Anger is the ultimate destroyer of your own peace of mind
In the past few years, I have made a thrilling discovery ... that until one is over sixty, one can never really learn the secret of living. One can then begin to live, not simply with the intense part of oneself, but with one's entire being.
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